"The Family: A Haven for the Wounded Heart." This is the title of the session held in the afternoon of Thursday, September 24th, the third day of the Congress of the World Meeting of Families, by Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, Archbishop of Manila and President of Caritas International.

In front of more than eight thousand people, the Philippine Cardinal spoke about wounds and the difficult situations that families are living with today, such as loneliness, poverty and disease; However—said the Cardinal—"wounded hearts can be healed" because "even the risen Christ has wounds."

The family has an important role in taking care of these wounds; it is in fact a "gift of a presence of love," just like the Church, which is the family of faith and "a field hospital for healing, where we must always be ready to respond to emergency situations." Along with them, we walk supporting one another, to grow in love and service through acts of charity, through prayer, without forgetting the importance of the liturgical and sacramental aspect of the faith, which heals these wounds.

 

The third day of the World Meeting of Families was also marked by the participation of Gianna Emanuela Molla, daughter of St. Gianna Beretta Molla—patron of the meeting together with John Paul II—who explained how the pain of infertility is sometimes a heavy cross to carry, but that it finds an important support in conjugal love and closeness of the community.

 

In the morning, among others, Msgr. Livio Melina, president of the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family in Rome, gave a lecture, in which he stressed, in a section entitled "Father, forgive me ... Family, forgive me: the Family and the Sacrament of Reconciliation," the importance of forgiveness in family relationships. It is in fact through reconciliation that relationships are renewed and become a source of new life, while families become places of mercy. The construction of these homes of mercy is helped by the presence of the figure of grandparents in families, a topic addresses at the meeting on "Intergenerational Love: Grandparents and Great-grandparents", where Catherine Wiley, founder of the Catholic Grandparents, Philip Butcher, Director at the International Centre of the Catholic Grandparents Association, and Michael La Corte, the director of the Catholic Grandparents US, explored the theme of transmitting the faith through the generations, teaching to share love and caring for the family.